Umbra/halo could use proper in-game descriptions.
Posted: Tuesday, 12th June 2018, 09:04My current Fun Elf (i.e. melee DE) found a ring of Shadows. Great find! It also made me realize that the umbra effect has no decent description in the game. Let me roleplay a new player.
Mmmkay, so I guess this "Umbra" is that funny effect that darkens tiles around me and, uh, it lets me use invisibility? And adds a bit of stealth? Must be it.
Then I look on my character screen (%) and see this:
on a character with 23 Dex, wearing a ring mail and having 5 in Stealth. Wow, this Stealth skill sure does a lot, I will train it more often! (Ha ha)
Or maybe it's this umbra thing that does something more? Let's see, maybe it's in the lookup descriptions somewhere?
?/T - status - nope, nothing found.
?/I - item - ...shadow dragon scales? But I typed "umbra", is this thing buggy?
?/K - skill - ah, no, that's for something else. So what else to look for, maybe...
?/F - feature? - yeah, no results found. So how about...
?/A - ability - ohh, shadow step! So can I teleport to things if they're within dark tiles? Great! But how do I use this ability, there's nothing on the ability screen... Is my game bugged?
(Typing "umbra" in ?/A yields Shadow Step description.)
So the current solution is to go to wiki or use learndb/beem and there you can finally see that umbra doubles your stealth and grants accuracy penalty to you and everything in the umbra (unless you worship specific gods hard enough, which grants you immunity to that penalty).
I'd suggest giving both umbra and halo a proper status - you know, like Fly, Berserk or -Recite - and put a proper description in ?/T for them. Not a high priority or a very important thing, but would be nice to implement it sometime.
Q - the ring of Shadows (right hand) {Umbra +Inv Stlth+}.
A black ring that can make its wearer one with the shadows. It creates a dark
umbra that surrounds the wearer and increases stealth greatly, and reduces the
accuracy of all those within it.
It lets you turn invisible.
It makes you more stealthy.
Mmmkay, so I guess this "Umbra" is that funny effect that darkens tiles around me and, uh, it lets me use invisibility? And adds a bit of stealth? Must be it.
Then I look on my character screen (%) and see this:
Stlth +++++++...
on a character with 23 Dex, wearing a ring mail and having 5 in Stealth. Wow, this Stealth skill sure does a lot, I will train it more often! (Ha ha)
Or maybe it's this umbra thing that does something more? Let's see, maybe it's in the lookup descriptions somewhere?
?/T - status - nope, nothing found.
?/I - item - ...shadow dragon scales? But I typed "umbra", is this thing buggy?
?/K - skill - ah, no, that's for something else. So what else to look for, maybe...
?/F - feature? - yeah, no results found. So how about...
?/A - ability - ohh, shadow step! So can I teleport to things if they're within dark tiles? Great! But how do I use this ability, there's nothing on the ability screen... Is my game bugged?
(Typing "umbra" in ?/A yields Shadow Step description.)
So the current solution is to go to wiki or use learndb/beem and there you can finally see that umbra doubles your stealth and grants accuracy penalty to you and everything in the umbra (unless you worship specific gods hard enough, which grants you immunity to that penalty).
I'd suggest giving both umbra and halo a proper status - you know, like Fly, Berserk or -Recite - and put a proper description in ?/T for them. Not a high priority or a very important thing, but would be nice to implement it sometime.